This invention relates to cabinets or storage facilities for keeping patient medications and prescription drugs for a given patient. The invention is more specifically directed to a locking, self-sanitizing cabinet suitable for use in a hospital or health care facility, mounted in or on the wall of a patient room in a hospital or health care facility, to secure pharmaceuticals for a given patient or group of patients, to avoid hospital-acquired infections, and to facilitate keeping an audit trail of access to the items stored in the cabinet.
In general, pharmaceuticals are delivered to patients when needed, and this typically involves use of a medications cart containing the prescription medications for the patients on a given floor of the hospital or health center. The cart is typically loaded in a pharmacy department and then is brought to the particular hospital floor. The cart is wheeled from room to room to deliver each patient his or her drugs at the time that the nurse or other practitioner is to administer them. The use of a cart has been more convenient and more efficient than obtaining each patient's medications individually. However, the use of a cart to transport medications room to room is inefficient and awkward. The medications cart takes up valuable space in the hallway and corridors. Administering drugs from the cart involves bending and stooping to obtain the drugs from lower drawers. If the nurse needs a particular drug for one of her patients when another nurse has the cart for her medication rounds, then the first nurse has to spend time hunting the cart down and often it is difficult to find the cart. Also, when the pharmacy staff comes to the floor to restock the cart, the cart is often in use and difficult to find, resulting in wasted time for the pharmacy staff. Often, the cart does not fit into the patient's room. In addition, the portable cart requires periodic charging of its batteries, and this task is often overlooked and forgotten until a failure occurs. Also, when a patient's bed or other large equipment item needs to be urgently moved into the hallway, any medication carts that are plugged into wall outlets to recharge can present a significant obstruction.
It is more convenient and better use of the nurse's time and efforts to keep the pharmaceuticals at the patient locations, i.e., in the patient's room or ward, or in the cluster of rooms where the patient is located. Medications need to be secured at the place of administration, that is, kept locked with a key lock or other mechanism, with access limited only to persons in the nursing staff and pharmacy staff. A record of access to the pharmaceuticals needs to be maintained, but this usually requires making pen-and-ink entries on a paper record, or separately keying in information on separate computer work station.
My earlier U.S. Pat. No. 7,668,620 discloses a wall-mounted pharmacy cabinet situated at the patient location. Medications prescribed for a patient can be loaded into the cabinet by pharmacy staff and stored securely until administered to the patient. The system automatically tracks access to the cabinet. Nurse staff can access the cabinet electronically (e.g., using a pass-code, a barcode reader, RFID device, fingerprint scanner or wireless means). The medications cabinet is kept secure, and with its drawers being closed and locked after each use.
It is desired for the pharmacy staff to be able to load these wall-mounted cabinets from the hallway, without having to actually enter the patient room. It is also desirable to protect patient privacy. All the advantages of the wall-mounted pharmaceutical cabinet (U.S. Pat. No. 7,668,620) should also be present in any improved cabinet as well. Where multiple patients occupy a hospital room, each patient should be provided with a respective drawer or bin, with the nurse being able to access these bins individually. At the same time, the pharmacy staff should be able to load all the bins or drawers for a given cabinet at one time. Alternatively, bins can be assigned specifically for different users, and for different functions. For instance, a bin can be assigned to be accessed only by respiratory therapy, and a bin can be assigned to store the patient's medication brought to the hospital from home, a bin can be used for secure storage of patient's belongings, and controlled substances can potentially be stored by incorporating a secondarily locked compartment within the cabinet.
As a means for reducing the incidence of hospital-acquired infections, it would be advantageous for the bins, as well as the medications and other items stored in the bins, to be sanitized and/or sterilized to destroy any bacteria, virus or other pathogens that may be present from handling or transportation of the bins. The passthrough cabinet also reduces traffic into and out of the patient's room, thereby reducing the chances to spread infection both into the patient's room and from the patient's room to other hospitalized patients.